


All Things Kinetic

by Megg33k



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megg33k/pseuds/Megg33k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written just after "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" as the conclusion that might have been.</p><p>"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."<br/>~H. L. Mencken</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things Kinetic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CrayolaDinosaurs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrayolaDinosaurs/gifts).



> Spoilers for "The Girl Who Knew Too Much"... maybe this will be how it plays out. Who knows?
> 
> Written for Angela. I hope you like it, darling! I love you! ♥

“What if telling him gets him killed?” Even when Stiles wasn’t right, he was still right.

“I can’t lose both of my parents,” he said. In retrospect, the words sounded more like ‘not even god himself could sink this ship.’

First rule of life: never say can’t. Saying the word pushes it out into the world. Potential becomes kinetic as its shoved through a keyhole built just a bit too small, sometimes causing the apostrophe T to wiggle loose and fall away.

This was one such occasion, the discarded letter and its punctuation lying atop a pile of broken glass. Can’t had turned to can in the space of a breath and escaped on the wind, his father in tow. Moonlight glinted off the window’s shards, left to remind him that wit, no matter how sharp, couldn’t save the people he loved.

Claws receded into the hand that gripped his shoulder. “We’ll find him.”

“Find him. Right.” Stiles turned on his heel, slamming Scott’s wrist to the nearest hard surface. His heart throbbed in his ears so loudly that his own voice was muffled to the point of sounding like he was talking through a tin can. “We shouldn’t _have to_ find him!”

“Stiles, I—”

“You what? Huh, Scott? You should have done something? You should have killed her? You shouldn’t have let her take him? Which of those should we explore first?”

Stiles knelt to pick up the crumpled remains of his dad’s badge, tears already stinging at the corners of his eye by the time his fingers brushed the metal. He was devastated, sure. Worried, too. But those emotions dance alongside rage and hate and fear. They toed along the edge of something dark and menacing. A piece of himself he hadn’t seen before.

“Find him,” he spoke from the ground.

“Stiles, she kicked my ass. I can’t go alo—”

Before Stiles realized he’d even stood up, he was already in Scott’s face. “Aw, is da itty bitty werewolf hurt? Did he get a wittle boo-boo?” He could feel his face harden and crumple into a scowl as he stared through slits where wide-eyes once lived. “ _You’ll. heal._ This is my father we’re talking about.” The star’s points bit into his palm, and in turn, he forced them to do the same into Scott’s chest. In the spot equivalent to where it was ripped from his dad’s shirt, crimson rose and spread across the white expanse of white fabric. As the wolf whimpered, the human growled, “Find him.”

Someone needed to tell Derek, but when no one knew what to say, they collectively chose silence. Stiles headed for the door, leading Lydia by the wrist. And Scott… the sniffer dog stay behind to… sniff.

***

Across town, an Alphas ears pricked at a banshee’s cry. He knew the sound, knew her scent. His sister lay tethered to machines, but at least she was being cared for. That’s what doctors were meant to do. He… he was meant for other things. Derek wasn’t a healer. He was a protector, and someone needed protection. With the faintest nod of permission, he was gone.

Derek wasn’t even cognizant of his surroundings as he raced toward… wherever the hell he was going. It didn’t matter. His overzealous sense of responsibility to everyone he knew had him on a leash and tugged him mercilessly along.

 _Come. Heel. Fetch._ His subconscious barked commands and he studiously obeyed. _Good boy._

From somewhere in the distance he was blindsided with another scent, a _stronger_ scent. Jennifer. What if the wail was for her? He ran faster.

His palms and soles stung as they pounded the earth, rocks and twigs, be damned. He’d already lost enough, and he refused to lose her, too. Not now. Not like everyone else.

Jennifer’s trail eventually ended where a monstrosity stood. The creature reeked of her, but it looked of something else entirely. What had it done to Jennifer to be covered in her scent? There was no answer that came with good news, and its fate was sealed.

Claws and teeth met mangled flesh, and Derek’s body screamed as he was smashed to the ground.  Blood mixed and mingled as the ripping and tearing continued, and the beast eventually lay dying. With its blood still slick on his hands and in its final moments, he interrogated the atrocity.

“Where is she? Where’s Jennifer?”

And, silently, it answered, slipping back into its mask. Bleeding out in his arms, covered in her life force, the loss of love—the illusion of it—slipped away. Tears blazed fire down his cheeks, the tang of salt on his tongue when he licked them from the corners of his mouth.

Derek Hale refusing loss? It was laughable. His soul was forged from loss and pain and regret. With his propensity for loving monsters who loathed him, he should have been head over heels with himself. Catch-22, apparently.

***

Stiles ran in to find Derek hunched over Jennifer’s corpse. His father, tied up and gagged but otherwise un-phased, called out as best he could from off to the right. The sound was weak, but he was alive. Stiles rushed to untie him, fumbling with the knots until they relented and quickly removed the gag.

“I knew I should have kept you in Scouts,” his dad joked.

“Do you—do you want me to tie you back up? Because I will.”

“I’d like to see you try.” He grinned with what strength he had left.

“Dad, I—”

“You were right. I should have believed you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. That’s not a thing people believe. Well, not sane people. Which, I suppose, is really just a matter of opin—”

“Stiles! Shut up and help an old man up.”

Before complying, Stiles threw his arms around his father’s neck. “Thanks for, ya know, not dying.”

“My pleasure. But Derek’s the one you should thank, not me.”

Stiles rose and edged toward the Alpha’s silhouetted figure. Derek still clung to the lifeless form, rocking on his haunches, but his face had gone stoic.

“Heyyyy…” Stiles knelt facing Derek, gently trying to coax the corpse from his hands. “Why don’t you just put that down. It’s… icky.” He scrunched his nose as the Darach’s body hit the ground with a thud and hoped not to look quite as disgusted as he felt. Arguably, he didn’t try very hard, though.

Derek held up his hands, still dripping with the Darach’s blood, and stared at Stiles through his stained digits. “She’s dead.”

“Yeah. She is.” When he tried to lower Derek’s hands by his wrists, he clamped onto Stiles’s wrists in return. Stiles looked at their parallel points of contact for a long minute before finally speaking. “You saved my dad’s life. I suppose I should thank you for that.”

“I destroy _everything_. I lose _everyone_ , including my own family. I couldn’t even save them.”

“You saved mine.” Stiles saw it all. He and Lydia watched from the shadows, under the guise of stealth, but really just too scared to move or speak. “You were kinda great.”

Derek stared back expectantly, but Stiles was fresh out of words… mostly.

 _I could so kiss you right now_ , he thought.  Then, before he could think much further, thinking turned to saying, and saying to doing. Timid and awkward were both accurate adjectives. Especially since he hadn’t entirely meant to do it. But, when he felt Derek’s hand—warm and sticky—against his cheek, he dared not to bat it away. The touch was light, cursory, exploratory.

Stiles cracked one lid and saw Derek’s eyes were closed. Both of them. Like a normal person. He pulled back slightly, but Derek held Stiles’s bottom lip between his teeth. They scraped until it escaped their hold as Stiles continued to retreat.

Derek’s eyes narrowed, his head cocked to the side. He flinched, just the barest of movements, but the intent to dart in for round two was there. And that suddenly made all the difference in the world: intent.

Stiles nodded and met him in the middle. And, in that moment, can’ts again became cans, and potential, once more, turned kinetic. But, unlike the ill-conceived emergence of every can’t in the universe, they became lock and key. One’s positive slotted to fill the other’s negative, and they fitted themselves together with finesse. They were poetry in motion.

Words became superfluous as lips and tongues were repurposed, and suddenly, out of tragedy, came the triumph of imagination over intelligence. It was something new. And, had he not been otherwise engaged, Stiles would have said it was good.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really written TW. I've definitely never written Stiles or Sterek. I don't quite know what happened here. I love comments, though.
> 
> For those of you who are new to my work, I apologize for any errors. I don't use a beta, and I tend to post my first drafts (without even re-reading them) at around 4am. Today it's actually 6am. Extra leniency please?


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